All Hallow's
by Skybright Daye
Summary: A Halloween at Xavier's. Pure fluff.


**Title:**All Hallow's  
**Word Count:** 990  
**Summary:** A very irate monster stalks the halls of the School. Pure silliness, despite the solemn title. This is the fic equivalent candy corn.

**Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters are the property of Marvel/20th Century Fox. I own nothing, being but a textual poacher.

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night.

It has long since become a literary cliche of the worst type: but in point of fact, it _was_ a dark and stormy night, one of the darkest and stormiest Halloweens in Xavier School history. Rain rattled hard against the windows, thunder cracked and brilliant streaks of white lightning provided flashes of startling illumination.

Which really made it a lucky thing that the teachers opted for throwing a big Halloween party every year instead of taking the students trick-or-treating (the general consensus being that loosing a large gang of mutant children on the surrounding countryside was probably not the wisest of ideas). Otherwise, they may have had to face the prospect of entertaining said gang of mutant children on short notice -- not something that any of them, even (or perhaps _especially_) Logan, were keen on trying.

As it was, however, the School dining room was already festooned with orange-and-black crepe paper and well-stocked with caramel apples, various fun-sized candies, and enough sweet cider to float a battleship (Ororo's customary adherence to healthy diet being relaxed, temporarily, for the holiday). Some of the older students had jumped at the chance to run carnival-style games for the younger kids -- it gave them an excuse to dress up, despite their professed (and largely faked) disdain for the holiday as "kiddy stuff".

Laughter mingled with the sounds of "Monster Mash" and general chatter, and the costumes ran the gamut from fairly mundane (Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, the twins, were dressed as Leia and Luke Skywalker) to the outright bizarre (Jones had pasted several cardboard cereal boxes -- each with ragged gashes in it -- to himself, was carrying around a "bloody" plastic knife, and explained calmly to anyone who asked that he was a "serial killer"). Even with the oddities of costumes (and the occasional quarrel over who had had the idea first when duplicate costumes cropped up), things seemed to be running smoothly. Marie and Bobby had recovered from their latest lover's spat only a few days earlier, and were manning the punch table dressed as Frankenstein and the Bride.

"Bobby helped me fix it," Marie explained brightly, running a hand over her stiffly-coiffed hair (the natural white streaks had proven to be an advantage in this case).

Kitty Pryde grinned and gave her glittery, lopsided fairy wings a tug. "It looks great, Rogue." She said admiringly. "But it's gonna take forever to wash all that hairspray out, isn't it?"

"Ah, not any longer than it'll take Bobby to get the green dye out of his." Marie replied, and handed over a glass of punch.

Professor Xavier had somehow talked most of the teachers into _Star Trek_ uniforms; Ororo made a very fetching Uhura, Kurt had put his pointed ears and two-fingered hands to good use as a somewhat oddly-colored Mr. Spock, and Scott had opted for a generic engineering uniform (jokes about redshirts were being quietly circulated). Wolverine had declined, muttering that he'd already been talked into _one_ uniform this year, and that was all he was going to stand for. Jubilee had remarked, with typical perkiness and lack of tact, that she personally was glad -- the thought of Logan in yellow spandex was not something to relish. That led to a spirited debate over whether Logan would be Starfleet command material or not: which, in turn, led to Jubilee catching what could only be described as the evil eye from Logan.

All in all, it was as successful and uneventful as any party at Xavier's ever got; and when the teachers finally managed to herd their charges towards bet at half-past midnight, the general consensus was that it had been a great holiday. Even the raging storm outside did little more than add a pleasantly atmospheric touch to the halls as things gradually quieted down. Soon a dark silence descended over the school, broken only by the flash of lightning and the rumbles of thunder.

Then there was a piercing, bloodcurdling scream.

Doors flew open and students and teachers alike stuck their heads out, looking around with startled puzzlement.

One particular door slammed open and a scowling Marie emerged, wrapped in her battered green bathrobe and still sporting a seemingly untouched hairdo. Closer observation, however, showed that Marie's hair was dripping wet -- and yet still held solidly in place.

Marie stalked her way down the halls, the irate look on her face prompting most of her more intelligent schoolmates to duck quickly back into their rooms. Lightning and thunder made her look even more like the Bride of Frankenstein than she had earlier. Reaching Bobby's room, she slammed her palm angrily against the door until it rattled in the doorframe. "_Bobby_! Open this door!"

After another moment Bobby cracked the door open, apparently also freshly-showered and with only a few streaks of green dye left in his hair and along one side of his chin. "Marie? What's the matter?"

"_Look_. At. My. Hair." Marie seethed, a dangerously high percentage of her Inner Wolverine making itself manifest.

"Uhm." Bobby swallowed convulsively and tried to get a winning smile out past his nervous expression. "It . . . looked great all night?"

"Yeah." Marie jabbed him in the chest with her forefinger. "_An' now it won't come out_. So what did you _do_?"

"Ah . . . um . . . er . . . ." Bobby's face switched quickly from "mild discomfort" to "outright panic". "Marie, I dunno what could've happened . . ."

A short distance down the hallway, two small forms -- one clad in black Jedi robes, the other in a flowing white dress -- exchanged wicked grins.

"Think she'll find out it was us switched the spray lacquer with the hairspray?" Pietro Maximoff asked brightly.

His sister, Wanda, shook her head (jarring her Princess Leia wig slightly askew). "No way." She whispered back, calmly tugging her wig back into place. "And that'll teach _her_ to say that _Star Wars_ is dumb."


End file.
